Letters of a German American Farmer: Juernjakob Swehn Travels to America (Bur Oak Original)

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Early in the twentieth century, drawing upon the hundreds of letters written to his father by students who had emigrated to northeastern Iowa from Mecklenburg, in northeastern Germany, Johannes Gillhoff created the composite character of Juernjakob Swehn: the archetype of the upright, honest mensch who personified the German immigrant, on his way to a better life through ambition and hard work. Gillhoff's farmer-hero, planting and harvesting his Iowa acres, joking with his neighbors during the snowy winters, building a church with his own hands, proved so popular with the German public that a million copies of Janduuml;rnjakob Swehn der Amerikafahrer are in print. Now for the first time this wise and endearing book is available in English.

andldquo;First, let's talk about pigs,andrdquo;Juernjakob Swehn writes from his farm in Iowa. andldquo;In America, pigs have a curly tail and talk in Low German so I can understand them.andrdquo; Swehn builds a log house and makes a success of farming, marries a woman who's andldquo;a whole different nation that has its confidence from the inside,andrdquo; raises a family, and becomes an elder in the Lutheran church. He recognizes his good fortune but acknowledges that memories of his village grow stronger every year, that andldquo;being homesick is the best thing that home can do for you andhellip;no power on earth holds on to you like your homeland.andrdquo; It is this sense of home, both in Iowa and in Mecklenburg, that makes Juernjakob Swehn appeal to today's readers as much as he appealed to readers in 1916.

What Our Readers Are Saying

Average customer rating based on 1 comment:

kmrbschmidt, November 5, 2006 (view all comments by kmrbschmidt)
This is the kind of book every American child should read, just to widen the borders of his or her consciousness. Sometimes the chapters can get a bit long, but on the whole, the reading experience is well worth the time invested, as the world of the 19th century immigrants to the United States comes alive through the tales these letters tell - much better than through any novel anyone could write today. Reading these compiled letters attritubuted to a character Gillhoff calls "Juernjakob Swehn" is like hearing one's immigrant great-great-great-grandfather tell his own story.
Highly recommended.

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